Little King's Story

Posted: 07/22/09

It's time to throw on the royal crown and lead a fledging kingdom to glory in Little King's Story, a simulation RPG that's drawing comparisons to Nintendo's own Pikmin. It manages to successfully blend elements from the sim, RTS, and RPG genres, and there's enough content fit for a king, but is it enough for a fairy tale ending?

The fable begins with a young boy stumbling upon a magical crown that grants its wearer the ability to command others. After displaying your prowess to the citizens of Alpoko, a knight named Howser declares you the true king and charges you with the task of building up the kingdom and unifying the world. It's a tall order for such a young lad, but a lively bunch of supporting characters will aid you along the way.

While the narrative isn't incredibly strong or well-developed in Little King's Story, it does serve to add to the overall style and atmosphere of the game. Its tongue-in-cheek nature has fun with the fairy tale genre, and sports humorous dialogue and some a bit of adult-oriented innuendo. It's just enough to keep you entertained.

Little King's Story borrows from a several different genres, delivering an incredibly rich experience. The action breaks down into four basic activities: exploring the unknown regions of the world, raiding nearby kingdoms and conquering them, completing quests in order to expand your dominion, and cultivating your kingdom so that it continues to flourish. It offers up a diverse amount of action that ensures things never become stale.

The primary objective is to conquer your neighboring kingdoms in order to unify the world. In order to accomplish this, you need to recruit citizens to serve as your royal guard. You're initially limited to workers who can gather and dig, but as you improve your kingdom and unlock additional resources, you gain access to new jobs. Until you have the right person for the job, many areas of the world remain locked off, which forces you to build up your ranks. This means taking on quests to grind for cash. Completing quests earns you some serious loot and allows you to expand your kingdom into new territories. As you build up your towns, new jobs and recruits become available, which make life as a king that much easier.

Once you've amassed a fierce royal guard, you can charge into enemy territory to take on one of seven rival kings. Advancing through the world involves multitasking at almost every turn, such as fending off foes while clearing out obstructions and forging new pathways. Eventually, you stand toe-to-toe with the leader of each realm in a zany boss fight. Whether it's a straight up brawl, a series of trivia questions, or an epic uphill race, each is more insane than the last. They also become increasingly more rigorous and challenging, so be prepared to dig in.

There's a ton of content packed into this game, which will easily take you over 30 hours to get through. There's a fair amount of backtracking, but you eventually earn the ability to warp around, which cuts back on travel time. Additionally, the game is no push-over even on the easiest difficulty setting, so don't expect to blaze through it without a few mishaps.

Though it's rare for a king to come down off his throne and get his mitts dirty, this royal lad is very hands-on. You're able to run around and perform basic attacks with your scepter, but without the aid of you royal guard, you're mostly harmless. Rather, when you issue an order to a specific job type, individual units corresponding to it take action. It's not the most intuitive system, and in many battles you'll find yourself interrupting your assaults by retreating and regrouping to avoid excessive casualties.

You have to manually recruit citizens at first, but later on with the aid of a podium, you can assemble your guard with ease. You're also stuck with a basic formation until you unlock more, which is fortunate, as once your numbers swell, controlling your party effectively in a tight spot proves difficult. Occasionally, a unit or two will get caught behind a fence or sign, or fall down to a lower area, forcing a detour so you can regroup with them. This gets even more difficult when the camera shifts to a fixed angle.

It can also be too hard to micromanage your royal guard just when you need to the most. Though you can move specific units or create smaller groups at any time, you don't retain independent control of them once they've been set in motion. If you want to change up a command, you have to recall all the units in your party and re-assign their tasks, or else wait for them to finish and return. This doesn't pose a major problem during the early portions of the game, but it becomes a real hindrance during more intense boss battles and complex environments.

Of course, formulating a strategy for some of the more grueling battles is part of the game, and if you haven't prepared, you're doomed to fail. Many of the boss battles are trial-and-error until you figure out the right patterns, though you're able to retry them immediately if you fail. In addition, once you unlock the more individually powerful jobs, you don't need to haul around so big of a group, which makes navigation that much easier.

For the most part, the controls do work well, in spite of the limitations that emerge once the difficulty and complexity ramps up.

Though it's impressive just how much is going on at any given time, Little King's Story's visuals aren't pushing any limits. When there's too much action on screen, the frame rate takes a noticeable hit. Still, it's a decent looking game, and there are some nice touches here and there, such as the king's grizzled look the longer he goes without rest.

There's a little bit of voice work here and there, which shifts between several languages as well as some gibberish, but it's brief and hardly leaves an impression. The soundtrack features such classical hits as Offenbach's "Infernal Galop," Rossini's "William Tell Overture," Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," and many more. It may be a bit of a cop out, but the music really fits the game's style, especially during many of the boss fights.

Little King's Story is an impressive package, with only a few lingering flaws keeping it from true greatness. It's a slow burn that rewards those with the patience to appreciate its elaborate setup. Additionally, the side quests can be enjoyed at your own pace, so you don't always need to invest hours to make headway. This king is more than worthy of his little crown.

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